thoughts on newness and resolving

These days I don't make official New Year's Resolutions.  There is nothing so paralysing as my own expectations of myself.  I like to think of having hopes, dreams, intentions.

But if I'm honest, there's always a giant To Do List in my head and at the beginning of the year, after Christmas is over and there is a sense of starting - yes, it does gain more weight.  Something in the mentality of the season, together with the usual break from the ordinary in late December, means that I return home with a mind unusually geared up for action.

Some of the things on the To Do List are rather trivial and hardly worthy of a New Year's Resolution (NYR), such as 'must clean out that drawer'.  Other hopes/dreams/intentions are rather more profound: 'I would like to be more courageous/wise/disciplined'.  All, of course, are personal in some degree, because they are within my sphere of influence.  'Achieve world peace' would be rather unobtainable since I am not the only person on earth.  However, I can think about how I interact with family and friends.  I think about what I choose to say or not say.  When I choose to stand up, when I choose to sit down.

As I noted in the last edition of our church magazine, I rather like the idea of prayers for the year rather than resolutions.  And certainly, it gives a different emphasis.  'Dear Lord, I would like more courage/wisdom/discipline this year,' has a degree of co-operation involved, no longer a lonely pursuit but a conscious decision to ask for help.  Or as the wise man once said in a rowing boat - you can row and pray at the same time.  The two are complimentary.


So, although wary of making NYRs, I do have a gentle bundle of intentions.  Of hopes.  Of prayers.  And the word 'New' carries a certain sense of possibility.  I went through a stage a couple of years ago when I pondered the nature of potential and worried that left on the shelf too long, covered in the dust of years, it shrivels into nothing.

Such a thought did not hold in the long term, since it doesn't fit with my worldview.  I believe in a God who redeems, a God who is constantly taking things off the shelf and transforming them into something beautiful. The potential you left behind may take a different shape now, but with a bit of imagination, who knows what it will be? Even if it's been left there for years.

You may just need a bigger duster.

Of course, pondering the nature of newness, I remind myself that 'his mercies are new every morning', and I certainly don't have to wait until January 1st to consider how great is the faithfulness of YHWH, the great I-AM, always was, always is, always will be.